On Wednesday morning I found my Delaware hen, Greta, dead in the run. She was laid out and something had consumed some of her face and there was blood around her vent area. For the last few months, I'd been thinking she was headed for heart failure, so I thought "Oh, she died and some lucky rat went to work."
Then Thursday morning I found another Delaware dead. Same half-eaten face. But this hen was clearly killed. I found blood spatter where she'd been roosting (though no sign of blood anywhere else?!), and she looked like she'd been possibly dragged to where I found her. (She was not super near a wall or other indications that something tried to take her out of the coop).
So . . . what did this?!
My main association with predators in the night is a total massacre. This animal (or animals) is just taking one chicken at a time, and just eating the face and maybe a bit of the body.
I know that rats can get into my chicken area. My chickens do not have a proper rat-proof coop---they roost on branches and bars in the run. I did a big inspection of the run yesterday and found to my horror that a section of wire that looked secure was actually totally detached from the board, meaning there was a huge (like 2 foot) section of wire that an animal could have crawled through. There is a ferral cat that comes through my property and spends a lot of time around my chicken run (because it hunts the rats), but I've never seen it in my run or try to get in my run.
I know that there could be other predators (minks, weasels, etc) that are around but I've just never seen them.
Has anyone experienced anything like this? Just one bird killed, face eaten but that's about it? Could a rat take out not one but two large hens (we're talking 6 pound ladies)?
I spent last night in a hammock in the run with my grumpiest barn cat, so no fatalities last night. This weekend I'm going to try to cobble together a totally predator proof roosting box for the hens.
This is so stressful: I've had deaths before obviously, some of them terrible massacres, but I always knew what did it and how they got in. Having both be a mystery is really doing a number on me!
Then Thursday morning I found another Delaware dead. Same half-eaten face. But this hen was clearly killed. I found blood spatter where she'd been roosting (though no sign of blood anywhere else?!), and she looked like she'd been possibly dragged to where I found her. (She was not super near a wall or other indications that something tried to take her out of the coop).
So . . . what did this?!
My main association with predators in the night is a total massacre. This animal (or animals) is just taking one chicken at a time, and just eating the face and maybe a bit of the body.
I know that rats can get into my chicken area. My chickens do not have a proper rat-proof coop---they roost on branches and bars in the run. I did a big inspection of the run yesterday and found to my horror that a section of wire that looked secure was actually totally detached from the board, meaning there was a huge (like 2 foot) section of wire that an animal could have crawled through. There is a ferral cat that comes through my property and spends a lot of time around my chicken run (because it hunts the rats), but I've never seen it in my run or try to get in my run.
I know that there could be other predators (minks, weasels, etc) that are around but I've just never seen them.
Has anyone experienced anything like this? Just one bird killed, face eaten but that's about it? Could a rat take out not one but two large hens (we're talking 6 pound ladies)?
I spent last night in a hammock in the run with my grumpiest barn cat, so no fatalities last night. This weekend I'm going to try to cobble together a totally predator proof roosting box for the hens.
This is so stressful: I've had deaths before obviously, some of them terrible massacres, but I always knew what did it and how they got in. Having both be a mystery is really doing a number on me!
